Congregations

The Church's Future Hope

Peter Moore describes the impressive sunken garden in front of the Beinicke Rare Book Library on Yale University's campus. It is meant to simulate the universe. A large marble pyramid stands in one corner, symbolising time. Another corner sports a huge doughnut shaped structure standing on its side. It signifies energy. In a third corner stands a huge die perched on one tip as if ready to topple any which way. It is the symbol of chance. This, Moore says, is the world view of modern man: 'a self-existing universe consisting of energy, time and chance.' And those in Babylon, ancient or modern, don't know which way the die will fall. Chance is opaque. It is the world of whatever.

Bible Christians think the Yale garden is a lie. They hold that there is a God who knows and orders the course of history down through the rise and rubble of nations until the days when he sets up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed. This is no brilliant insight of theirs; they only hold this because there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries - and has done so. He has given them revelation material like Daniel 2. But we who hold this kingdom-view can easily forget how unbearably sad Joe and Jane Pagan might be, for they go out their front door in the morning and have no idea where history is heading, or if it is. Maybe it's all too cerebral; but I can only say that if I didn't believe Daniel 2:44, I couldn't find the energy to place one foot in front of another.

To have a God who reveals mysteries, however, does not mean we have a God who reveals everything. He doesn't show us which stocks will profit or whether you can avoid cancer till you're eighty-nine, or whether one's nation will still exist twenty years hence. He only reveals what we need to have. And yet Daniel's praise helps us here, because he assures us that even what God doesn't tell us he knows: he knows what is in the darkness. You can walk into the future with a God like that - who shows you that history is going toward his unshakable kingdom and who assures you that even though you have many personal uncertainties you follow a God who knows what is in the darkness. So you can keep going with hope and without fear.

Extracted from The Message of Daniel by Dale Ralph Davies (Published by IVP, 2013)

Our Church

The Associated Presbyterian Churches is a confessional denomination whose system of doctrine is summed up in the Westminster Confession of Faith.

We confess that the Scriptures of both the Old and the New Testaments have been given by God to His Church by inspiration and that they are the sufficient and only infallible rule of faith and practice and arbitrator of all of all controversies with respect to our Most Holy Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

In agreement with the Scripture as the basis of all true churches, we identify our theology as being catholic, evangelical and reformed.

Our theology is “catholic” in the sense that it reaffirms the doctrines of the historic Christian Faith which spans across generational, geographical, language or racial boundaries. Thus, we take seriously the apostolic admonition recorded for us in Jude 3 to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.”

Our theology is “evangelical” in the sense that affirms the vital and biblical doctrines of historic Protestantism such as Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide.

Our theology is “reformed” in the sense that it is God-centered to the core.

Reformed theology is mainly (not exclusively) distinguished from other Protestant systems of belief by the fact that it places great emphasis on the doctrine of God.

The biblical structure of God’s covenant of grace, which is at the very heart of Reformed theology, provides the framework for our theology.

The APC came into being in 1989, following the perceived failure of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland to put into practice two chapters of the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Church’s Subordinate Standard.

In this way, it may be said that the APC ‘distinctives’ which caused its separate existence in May, 1989 were a re-asserting in its Church Practice of chapters 20 and 26 of the Westminster Confession of Faith.

Chapter 20: “Of Christian Liberty, and Liberty of Conscience” – ‘God alone is Lord of the conscience, and has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are in any way contrary to His Word; or beside it, if matters of faith or worship. So that, to believe such doctrines, or to obey such commands, out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of conscience: and the requiring of an implicit faith, and an absolute and blind obedience is to destroy liberty of conscience, and reason also.

Chapter 26: “Of Communion of Saints” – The APC seeks to re-assert this communion as expressed in the Westminster Confession of Faith itself: “Saints, by profession, are bound to maintain an holy fellowship and communion in the worship of God, and in performing such other spiritual services as tend to their mutual edification; as also in relieving each other in outward things, according to their several abilities and necessities. Which communion, as God offers opportunity, is to be extended to all those who in every place, call upon the name of the Lord Jesus”.

We in the APC, therefore, practice fellowship with all Evangelical Christians, and, on this basis, have an ‘open pulpit’ policy. We believe that it is correct to allow Christians to make their own decisions on matters that are not fundamental to the faith.

We emphasise the importance of doctrine based on the Bible as the Supreme Standard and the Westminster Confession of Faith as the Subordinate Standard.